Min. hardware config for decent 8800 GTS performance?

[Morgales]

My current setup is seriousely underperforming for my recently purchased 8800 GTS card:

AMD 64 3000+ single core
2 GIG RAM
300Gig SATA
Asus 8800 GTS 320

Average 3DMARK score: a poor 4700 3DMarks

I am gonna upgrade soon, but I need to know what the minium CPU configuration would be to benefit of the full power of the 8800GTS. Amd 4800+ or higher? 2 Gig ram 667 or 800?

I have the choice between 4800+ or 5000, my budget is thight and I don't wanna overdo it.

All advice and help is appreciated.

 

[bamacre]

A new cpu is really all you need. Is your current system socket 939, or AM2?

 

[Morgales]

939 saddly, I need to upgrade mobo and memory aswell

 

[bamacre]

Originally posted by: Morgales
939 saddly, I need to upgrade mobo and memory aswell

If you do that, then you might as well go Intel. You can pick up a P35 motherboard for about 100 bucks. Two GB's of ram for about 75.

 

[Morgales]

What Intel CPU do you recommend me? Cuz I see lots of people having a E6600 or something, but it's not cheap here in Belgium.

 

[bamacre]

Originally posted by: Morgales
What Intel CPU do you recommend me? Cuz I see lots of people having a E6600 or something, but it's not cheap here in Belgium.

If you are willing to overclock, you can spend less. At stock speeds, I wouldn't get anything less than an E6420 or E6400, whichever you can find cheaper.

 

[Morgales]

I rather keep everything stock, since i'm real oc noob. but tnx for your advice, I will check out some local stores for prices now.

 

[MarcVenice]

Why do you need to upgrade mobo and ram? You sure it can't handle a x2, lot's of mobo's do ...

 

[Morgales]

It's an asus A8N-SLI, it's based on 939 chipset. And here in Belgium there are no stores that sell any X2 939 cpu's

 

[deadseasquirrel]

Don't judge the power of your system by a 3DMark score. Judge it by the games you play and the settings you play them at. Depending on the games and resolutions/settings used, an A64 3000+ in no way at all will hold back a GTS 320. Overclocking your CPU wouldn't hurt, of course, but there's no need to spend more money just yet.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: Morgales
My current setup is seriousely underperforming for my recently purchased 8800 GTS card:

AMD 3000
2 GIG RAM
300Gig SATA
Asus 8800 GTS 320

Average 3DMARK score: a poor 4700 3DMarks

I am gonna upgrade soon, but I need to know what the minium CPU configuration would be to benefit of the full power of the 8800GTS. Amd 4800+ or higher? 2 Gig ram 667 or 800?

I have the choice between 4800+ or 5000, my budget is thight and I don't wanna overdo it.

All advice and help is appreciated.

Actually you ARE right - it IS seriously under-performing .. i'd expect at least 7,000 in 3DMark06 ... how do your *games* play? Can you run a FEAR benchmark or one of the other game banchmarks for us?

Perhaps the drivers are bad or old ... your CPU is a bit slow but certainly you can overclock it to at least a 3200+ ... that will take care of most of the bottleneck ...

but 4,700 in 3DMark06 with an 8800 GTS 320
:Q
--something IS wrong
[i think]

 

[Stumps]

wow....that score is lower than when I was using my old A64 3000+ and 7800GS setup.

Like every one else has stated something is wrong with your setup, my P-D 820@3.4ghz gets over 7000 3Dmarks using a 8800GTS or HD2900XT and those cards are crippled by the Asrock mobo's PCI-E x4 slot.

 

[Morgales]

Well tbh all the games I tested run great: Half Life 2, Half Life: lost coast, F.E.A.R demo etc.

I run them all at 1600x1050 max settings and they run smooth (dunno how much fps exactely though will check later). HL2: Lost Coast benchmark at that resolution gives me 45 FPS. which is what I expected.

I have been reading on other forums and the CPU is a bottleneck for 3Dmark and the Nvidia demos. I have been overlocking the CPU to 2.1 and it boosted the 3Dmark06 score too 5060. That's 300 points than my stock setup.

My cheap solution now is to order an opteron 170 wich would almost double the performance because of the dual core and its apparentely very easy to oc to 2.6. (some guy ran 3Dmark06 on his opteron 170 and 8800 GTS stock and got 7600 points).

I will post some benchmarks when I get home though.

Tnx all again for your advice.

 

[swtethan]

I had a e6400 before this, it got around 8700 at stock speed, but 10k at 3.2ghz. My current cpu gets 12k.

 

[abaqus07]

Awesome man thank u so much for this deal.

 

[abaqus07]

Really thank u.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: Morgales
Well tbh all the games I tested run great: Half Life 2, Half Life: lost coast, F.E.A.R demo etc.

I run them all at 1600x1050 max settings and they run smooth (dunno how much fps exactely though will check later). HL2: Lost Coast benchmark at that resolution gives me 45 FPS. which is what I expected.

I have been reading on other forums and the CPU is a bottleneck for 3Dmark and the Nvidia demos. I have been overlocking the CPU to 2.1 and it boosted the 3Dmark06 score too 5060. That's 300 points than my stock setup.

My cheap solution now is to order an opteron 170 wich would almost double the performance because of the dual core and its apparentely very easy to oc to 2.6. (some guy ran 3Dmark06 on his opteron 170 and 8800 GTS stock and got 7600 points).

I will post some benchmarks when I get home though.

Tnx all again for your advice.

is it possible that you are *forcing* AA in the control panel? Are you running 3DMarkXX at default settings?
5060 is ridiculously low for your CURRENT setup

 

[daveybrat]

Hmmmm.....that is definitely low. I never overclock anything and with the AMD rig in my Sig i get 8000 in 3Dmark06.

I'm sure i could get a lot higher if i overclocked, but i like runnnig everything at stock

 

[Morgales]

Originally posted by: daveybrat
Hmmmm.....that is definitely low. I never overclock anything and with the AMD rig in my Sig i get 8000 in 3Dmark06.

I'm sure i could get a lot higher if i overclocked, but i like runnnig everything at stock

Well you've got a 4800 dual core and I have a 3000 single core. That's a big difference.
I believe 7000+ scores are achieved on dual core systems.

@apoppin

I've run everything on default settings, no AA or AF forced.

I searched on ORBS and there is one guy having a similar system scoring equaly low:
http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=1320304

So I guess having a single core CPU is a real bottleneck.

 

[Stumps]

Originally posted by: Morgales

Originally posted by: daveybrat
Hmmmm.....that is definitely low. I never overclock anything and with the AMD rig in my Sig i get 8000 in 3Dmark06.

I'm sure i could get a lot higher if i overclocked, but i like runnnig everything at stock

Well you've got a 4800 dual core and I have a 3000 single core. That's a big difference.
I believe 7000+ scores are achieved on dual core systems.

@apoppin

I've run everything on default settings, no AA or AF forced.

I searched on ORBS and there is one guy having a similar system scoring equaly low:
http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=1320304

So I guess having a single core CPU is a real bottleneck.

They are, but not in your case, something is wrong with your setup as similar systems with lesser video cards can score higher than your system.

I doubt very much that you would see a huge increase in your current score by upgrading to a dual core....

You need to find out what is wrong with your system.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: Stumps

Originally posted by: Morgales
So I guess having a single core CPU is a real bottleneck[/b].

They are, but not in your case, something is wrong with your setup as similar systems with lesser video cards can score higher than your system.

I doubt very much that you would see a huge increase in your current score by upgrading to a dual core....

You need to find out what is wrong with your system.

No the CPU is not a serious enough bottleneck

something is wrong with your system ... what drivers are you using?

LATE EDIT: btw, there is nothing wrong with upgrading your CPU ... but if you just R&R it you won't gain very much ... something else is wrong! Fix it first, enjoy the system [or overclock] then upgrade.

 

[alkemyst]

Originally posted by: Morgales
939 saddly, I need to upgrade mobo and memory aswell

SHould be able to use a 4000+, 4400+/4800+ x2, Opteron 165-185.

I went Winchester 3200+ at 2520 to a 4000+ at 2830MHz and even at identical clockspeeds the 4000+ was snappier.

 

[cyrusm]

i say wait till the next big thing.
3dmark is such a ridiculously biased benchmark.
but just fyi, i have the same exact vid card and im getting around 12k
now considering that 3dmark is something thats supposedly a benchmark for the graphics card, how can there be such a big delta between our performances?

 

[Morgales]

Well it really seams my score seams normal for my setup. I did a quick search on ORBS and I've found at least 4 similar results, all with the same kind of setup: (1800-2100 range single core)

3DMark Score: 5399 Untitled
User: juneau4@hotmail.com Date: 2007-07-26
CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 2009 MHz
AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3200+
Display Driver: 6.14.11.5822
Driver Status: WHQL - FM Approved
Motherboard Model: A8N-E
Resolution: 1280x1024
OS: Microsoft Windows XP
System Memory: 2048 MB
Video Memory: 256 MB


3DMark Score: 5360 Untitled
User: thecounter@t-online.de Date: 2007-03-21
CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 2009 MHz
AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3200+($108.0+)
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS($295.0+)
BFG GeForce 8800 GTS Overclocked Water-Cooled Edition (PCI-e, 640MB) ($549.99+)
Display Driver: 6.14.10.9792
Driver Status: WHQL - FM Approved
Motherboard Model: LP NF4 Series($99.0+)
Resolution: 1280x1024
OS: Microsoft Windows XP
System Memory: 2048 MB
Video Memory: 512 MB


3DMark Score: 5331 Athlon 64 3000+@2.0ghz 8800gts
User: 810592 Date: 2007-02-26
CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 1998 MHz
AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3000+($108.0+)
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS($295.0+)
Display Driver: 6.14.10.9792
Driver Status: WHQL - FM Approved
Motherboard Model: GA-K8N Pro-SLI
Resolution: 1280x1024
OS: Microsoft Windows XP
System Memory: 2048 MB
Video Memory: 256 MB

3DMark Score: 5301 8800 GTS
User: dedark@tenbit.pl Date: 2007-06-20
CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 2009 MHz
AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3200+($108.0+)
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS($295.0+)
Display Driver: 6.14.11.5822
Driver Status: WHQL - FM Approved
Motherboard Model: A8N-E

To make things clears, I don't wanna upgrade my system only for 3DMARK06, but I just believe that I'm not using the full capacity of the 8800 GTS.

 

[Morgales]

And this is a list of setups in the same CPU range (1800-2100) but with dual core:

3DMark Score: 7342 February 1, 2007
User: derke_highwer@yahoo.com Date: 2007-02-01
CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual-Core 2009 MHz
Dual Core AMD Opteron(tm) Processor 170 ($114.0+)
Driver Status: WHQL - FM Approved
Motherboard Model: NF4-SLI-INF
Resolution: 1280x1024
OS: Microsoft Windows XP
System Memory: 2048 MB
Video Memory: 512 MB

3DMark Score: 7182 AMD A64 X2 3800+ (Toledo) + MSI 8800GTS OC Editio...
User: tomatomanz@madclubds.every1.ne... Date: 2007-06-24
CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual-Core 2009 MHz
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS ($295.0+)
Display Driver: 6.14.11.5822
Driver Status: WHQL - FM Approved
Motherboard Model: NF4-U-SLI
Resolution: 1280x1024
OS: Microsoft Windows XP
System Memory: 2048 MB
Video Memory: 256 MB

3DMark Score: 7113 8800GTS & 3800+ A64 X2
User: 127169 Date: 2007-06-27
CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual-Core 2009 MHz
AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 3800+ ($108.0+)
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS ($295.0+)
Display Driver: 6.14.11.5822
Driver Status: WHQL - FM Approved
Motherboard Model: KN9(NF-MCP55 series) ($99.0+)
Resolution: 1280x1024
OS: Microsoft Windows XP
System Memory: 2048 MB
Video Memory: 256 MB

3DMark Score: 7075 Stock 8800GTS Amd 3800+ X2 (first run)
User: justair@shaw.ca Date: 2007-01-26
CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual-Core 2009 MHz
AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 3800+ ($108.0+)
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS ($295.0+)
Display Driver: 6.14.10.9792
Driver Status: WHQL - FM Approved
Motherboard Model: M2N-E
Resolution: 1280x1024
OS: Microsoft Windows XP
System Memory: 2048 MB
Video Memory: 512 MB

3DMark Score: 7073 o6 3d mark 8800gts
User: stanleycliche@gmail.com Date: 2007-07-17
CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual-Core 2009 MHz
AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 3800+ ($108.0+)
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS ($295.0+)
Display Driver: 6.14.11.5822
Driver Status: WHQL - FM Approved
Motherboard Model: GA-K8N Pro-SLI

I truly belive that the 8800 GTS has much more potential in dual core systems than single core.